racism and the struggle for equality for the African-Americans. What is so

beautifully unique is how he wrote it in an artful, refined dissimulation of his true

self. He is deliberately misleading and often indirect as if to hide beneath his

words, coming across as oblique and delicate at the same time. This further

stresses the idea of the mask, being concealing and elusive, in many ways.

This particular piece of work is unequaled, not only to the literary world,

but the author himself. Paul Laurence Dunbar's other poems are written in a

specific dialect, brought on by his African-American descent. One example comes from

an earlier poem "When Dey 'Listed Colored Soldiers." The title alone is a good example

but the rest of the poem continues "DEY was talkin' in de cabin, dey was...